Ravioli, family and sometimes golf—the topics that come up before the Pro-Am.

Dave Faries here, after listening to the number-one golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler, discuss making ravioli from scratch.

“So you’ve got to roll the dough and you’ve got to cut the dough,” he told reporters in the media center on Tuesday afternoon. A routine opening, sure. But as in any captivating drama, there is an unexpected turn of events, followed by a dangling sense of foreboding. “We were at a rental house, so we didn’t have the right tools, and the only thing there was a wine glass.”

You can surmise the rest. He pushed the rim into the dough and the glass shattered. “I’ve heard nothing but horror stories since this happened about wine glasses, so be careful,” he advised the room.

His story has some relevance to this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which starts tomorrow, Jan. 30. It marks Scheffler’s return to PGA Tour action after cutting his hand while preparing Christmas dinner. He joins a field of 80 elite professional golfers, including 45 of the top 50 on the current Official World Golf Ranking list. In addition to Scheffler, Rory McIlroy (no. 3), Collin Morikawa (no. 4) and Hideki Matsuyama (no. 5) headline an impressive field.

The consensus among the professionals—80 amateurs will join them for the first two rounds—is that the course is firm and will be more challenging than usual if rain holds off. And that Pebble Beach Golf Links is a universal favorite, as courses go. Scheffler offers a reason, and it has nothing to do with the visual appeal. He mentions a cypress tree on the third hole, planted long before players began pounding drives over 300 yards. A bit of decoration then has become a menace now.

“I think when you get onto these older golf courses, as they develop over time, they almost have more of a charm to them where things aren't perfect,” he says. “I think it lends you to playing a different style of golf that you don't see at a typical golf course nowadays. When you play Pebble Beach, you have to play shots, you can't just hit it as hard as you can every time.”

But in the media center before play begins in earnest, there is just as much talk about things other than the tournament. “I guess you ruined the raviolis, too?” a reporter asks. “No, they were good,” Scheffler replies. “They weren’t that good, but they were pretty good.”

Earlier in the day, McIlroy sat in the media center. That’s when the subject of raviolis first came up. “I think he made enough money to hire a chef,” he told reporters. “It’s like, why are you cooking yourself?” When informed of the comment, Scheffler smiled. “I’ve got a chef,” he observed. “Her name’s Meredith. She’s pretty cute.”

Meredith is Scheffler’s wife. And other golfers were eager to share family stories with the press. On Wednesday morning, defending tournament champion Wyndham Clark—he broke the course record at Pebble Beach last year, firing a 60—said that he recently visited the course with his father, brother and friends. “They went and took pictures of the plaque, showed me—we all looked at it, we re-lived it,” he observed. “Everyone that was here that week that saw us came up and wanted an autograph or pictures. It was a really cool moment for me.”

A plaque recognizing the winner of each event adorns the Wall of Champions. Teamed last year with amateur Jeff Rhodes of the investment firm TPG Capital, McIlroy captured the 2024 pro-am title.

“Yeah, I got my name on the wall,” he said with a grin. “Just not the portion that I wanted.”

As for the course record, Clark says that he hopes that it stands for a while. “If it is broken, I hope it’s me, not someone else,” he added.

We will see how it plays out over the next few days.